How do you know when you’ve achieved your social media goals? First, you have to set some. Once the goals are in place, you must measure your social media performance, otherwise known as metrics.
Just over 70% of businesses track and analyze their metrics (Hubspot). If you don’t, it’s like playing “pin the tail on the donkey” in the dark. You won’t know if you are investing your time and effort in the right areas.
How will you know when you’ve hit your target?
I developed a simple tool for my clients to help track performance which you can create yourself. Open an Excel spreadsheet and in the far left column, list all of the online tools you are using to provide information, promote, or communicate about your business. Many of them are easy such as Facebook, Twitter, Yelp!, etc. There are some you may forget, like your Google Business or comments on your blog.
Along the top row, write the months of the year. I recommend looking at your numbers when you close your books. Build it into your month-end process list along with account reconciliation, billing, and inventory. This takes me approximately one hour to complete. If you only use a few tools, it will take you less time. Recording your numbers at month-end will allow for a month-over-month comparison for reporting to boards or for a simple performance review, depending on your needs.
Underneath each of the tools, list the metrics that these platforms provide you with by default. Facebook has items like fans, people talking about this, most viral posts, sources of traffic. Your blog has subscribers and comments. Your email marketing has total subscribers, opens, bounces, spam reports, opt-outs. Google Analytics has enough data to choke a horse. Start with the basics: visits, unique visits, bounce rate, average time on site, pages per visit, and number one traffic source. You can add more metrics as you determine what’s important to you.
The Danger with Data
The danger with data is that you can spend your entire life reading, digesting, and obsessing over it. I call this “geeking out.” Unless you are getting paid to pour over it for hours at a time, keep your data review sessions to a minimum. Checking your stats too frequently will cause you to freeze. You will find yourself so worried about the outcome of each action, you lose the organic feel, and it becomes stiff.
When reviewing, think about what may have caused a metric to go up or down using critical thinking. Your fluctuations will most likely be easy to figure out. Maybe your website was down for a couple of days, you haven’t blogged in three months, you sent out an email newsletter on a low-ranking day, Facebook changed its algorithm, and your reach has dropped, or you were on the radio that day. Perhaps you drafted a witty update, and it was retweeted from here until Sunday.
I look at a calendar to see what I did because it’s cause and effect. In reviewing my web visits several years ago, I noticed a huge spike that I couldn’t attribute to any action on my part. By chance, I had a conversation with Geralin and asked if she had mentioned me to anyone. She said that she had brought up my name to a large group, and as a result, I had three times my normal traffic. (Thanks, Geralin!)
Achieve Your Goals
Are you achieving your goals? You have to do some work to get there. Test your email marketing by sending on a different day or tinker with your headline. Alter the times of day or frequency you post to social networks. Fix nagging problems on your branded channels. If one of your tools isn’t performing the way you want, it may need some adjustment. After a certain amount of time, you may realize that one tool simply isn’t working for you, and there has been no return on investment. You won’t know until you track it.
The final measurement? Conversion! Here’s to hitting your target.
About today’s guest blogger:
Learn more about Kerry Rego.
